The Bay Area is saturated with bowls of ramen, and since few restaurants make their own noodles, the supposed appeal is the broths. Yelp lists 302 SFBA restaurants serving “tonkotsu ramen”, famous for its long cooking time, and many of those...

Read page 2 of the Ramen Street Festival part of J-Pop Summit, SF Japantown July 19-20, 2014! discussion from the Chowhound Events, San Francisco food community. Join the discussion today.

Interesting excerpt: “I also noticed a giant squeeze bottle with a white solid in it. Then it went into the boiling water to melt. I called out to the Tatsunoya guy to ask what it was. He said, “Oil”. I followed up with, “Pig fat?” And he said, “Yes”. Later I saw him refilling from a box of lard labeled as 0 grams transfats per serving. It was squeezed into each bowl.”

On a related note, I wonder if hot pot places just buy packaged broths. I spoke to one server in the South Bay who told me they use Little Sheep Brands for their hot pot and some grilled items. Shaokao/skewer restaurants here all seem to use the same brand of spices (msg, cumin, chili; occasionally seasoned with lighter fluid)

Interesting! The cultural valuation placed on Japanese food vs Vietnamese food aside, this is More ammo for my argument with friends that pho prices should be on par with ramen, yet it’s typically $3-5 cheaper and often comes with more proteins and similarly cooked for lengthy periods of time.